I've always found the Inner Light enchants to be damn near useless, mostly just because their lighting method annoys me. I just ditch them ASAP.
And any other enchant with a light effect..... also ditched, because A: the light effect on any other type of enchant is so weak as to be worthless, and B: it's taking up an effect slot that could be anything else.
But yeah, if Flash didn't work the way it does...... just Draconites, all the way. I wouldnt hesitate in this for a second.
Flash of light is fine, moonlamps are fine. I generally use a combination of both depending on what's going on and depending on what I'm doing, and what the layout is. I never enter a cave without AT LEAST 60 moon lamps. And that's WITH Flash working the way it does now, as a 30-second toggle. I've been doing it this way since shortly after I got the game.
The little light orbs are worthless, Flare as well, so never use them. And of course the Draconites just cancel the whole thing out by merely existing.
If the light orbs and Flare were altered somehow (and I have no idea how, that's for the brainy Arcen guys to come up with!) it might make things better, rather than just slapping a (rather pointless) time nerf on Flash (or nerfing the Lamps, for that matter).
Or, even just up the cost on Flash. I dont think it'd have to be much..... I could see 250 working pretty well. It's a powerful spell, but it's not on the level of something like Douse (which costs 400, I think?).
Now, all of this being said, a related and similar issue has occurred to me.
Alot of these "craft only" spells, the ones without levels..... well, many of them are really darned powerful. It's not just Flash, other things like Douse, Sunrise, Lightsnake, and so on, are all extremely useful and powerful spells. Buuuuuuuut..... the current version of the game, you pay just ONE (very cheap) cost, only ONCE, and you permanently have these at your disposal. Unlike, say, a powerful ATTACK spell, which requires either getting the common version from a mission at each levelup, or crafting a stronger version at each level up. That "cost" balances out the power of the attack spells a bit better. But there is no cost to things like Douse. Heck, if I remember the recipe for Douse, it's just 1 sapphire and 3 plums, isnt it? That's cheap as all heck for a spell as incredibly useful as that one is.
And (for the most part) I dont think simply increasing the mana cost for these is the way to go. They mitigated themselves at least somewhat by requiring that you re-craft them once per continent when the tiers were in place. So there was at least SOME cost, and effort, in maintaining them.
So a thought I'd had: What if these non-levelled spellgems could break down after a time? Like, you craft one, and exactly 5 levelups afterwards (arbitrary number), the gem broke, and would need replacing. Obviously, there'd be a counter on the gem display in your inventory that shows how close it is to shattering.
This might balance these out a bit better.... and different non-leveled spells could have different counts, like say, Light Snake might break after 5 levels, but the more powerful Douse might break after 2 or 3.
Just an idea I'd had. I dont think nerfing any of the spells, or increasing their cost is really the best way to balance them, so I thought an idea like this MIGHT be the sort of thing to go with, maybe.
